This article is an excerpt from the cutting room floor. It was in an early draft of my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2011; order your copy here). It covers how to lead through guidelines rather than leading through rules.

We need guidance during challenging times. We need something to keep us within healthy and productive boundaries. We are human and make mistakes. Having personal guidelines that we live our lives by will remind us of how we want to behave. It keeps us safe and on track.

This doesn’t have to be a detailed list of do’s and don’ts. A laundry list of rules and regulations isn’t practical. Instead, a judgment-based approach that can be broadly applied to any situation is much more flexible, manageable, and applicable. Every situation is different, and each decision we face will have a variety of new and unpredictable factors involved.

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